So, 2022 is coming to a close. I have bought myself some tech gadgets this year. Nothing crazy.
Firstly, the device on which I am typing this is a Windows 11 based Lenovo P1G4. Fantastic laptop. When I bought it last year, the goal was to dual boot Linux, but then I don’t do any serious development, and WSL is pretty neat. So, no Linux for now.
I upgraded my phone earlier this year. I upgraded from an LG G7 to a Samsung Galaxy S22. The LG phone worked perfectly fine, and I wanted to go another year with it, but LG stopped updating devices, and then left the smartphone business, so the device was definitely getting stale. Google does it’s best to update the underlying Services, whereby the phone remains somewhat fresh, but still. As far as the phone upgrade goes, I still think if price is not a concern, then the latest iPhones still remain the phone champs for many reasons. That said, I prefer Android for many reasons 🙂
I had badly wanted the Pixel 6/6 pro, except for me a large phone doesn’t make sense. I care more about the ‘mobile’ part of the phone, than the phone part. Both Pixel phones were too large for my liking.
The Galaxy S22 has worked out quite well. It does have Samsung bloat, but you can pretty much ignore all of those apps. The form factor is pretty much nailed down! The cameras work well, the speakers work well, wireless connectivity and 5G and everything works well. The screen is stellar. The haptics are pretty great too. Overall a great phone and Android 13 is looking pretty good. A lot of what I do is split between my laptop and my phone. For anything that is keyboard intensive, I use my laptop, and for other things, I use my phone or laptop.
Samsung phones are interesting in that they support DeX. I have a Thinkvision 14T monitor that works well with the Dex setup. So, between the phone, a Bluetooth Logitech keyboard and the monitor, I actually have a pretty decent desktop setup. Well, the phone does overheat, and DeX does have limitations, but overall, I’d say, it’s pretty solid. You can even use the phones screen as a mouse! Crazy!
I also use the Thinkvision M14T with my laptop, when I want a touch-screen. This is generally only ever used when I want to read PDF documents, annotate on them. Or take some notes on OneNote. Not the most ideal setup, but definitely better than having a stupid Surface device that does nothing well. (I’m still scarred by an old Surface 3 that just stutters.)
So, finally onto my third main device, I ended up getting myself an iPad Pro 12.9. Now, I tried this tablet last year, and absolutely loved it. The miniLED 120Hz display is great. The buttery smooth response is amazing! Also, apple pencil works pretty well. Now, I have had two bad experiences with Tablets. The first one was a Nook tablet, which absolutely sucked! I only wanted to read magazines and comics and such on it, and I believe the chip had some memory leak issue whereby, after using it for a few days, the device would get cripplingly slow. So, then I said, ok I am going to spend more money the second time around, and spring for a Surface 3. I think the surface 3 works ok for a Tablet. i.e., it was definitely more responsive than the Nook tablet. But for desktop/laptop mode, it absolutely sucked! The Atom core was terrible, and you couldn’t do anything well with it.
So for my third go around, I decided to get the most performant device in the hope that it stays responsive for a few years. I already have some workflows setup on the iPad and it works great. I am not trying to replace a laptop with it, but it looks like it could also work as a make shift laptop replacement when paired with an external keyboard.
I am excited to see what apple does with iPadOS in the future.
Now, if I had either bought an Android tablet, or bought all Apple devices, I’m sure they would have worked better across devices. But I actually like it this way. You get to experience the best of everything. I still have access to a work Macbook Pro, so I think I’ve covered all the important bases.
Here’s to a productive 2023.